As the Spring Festival approaches, red lanterns and festive ribbons line the streets, signaling the growing holiday atmosphere. Alongside this comes a gradual halt in production lines for many. On February 5th, Shenyuan Electric Vehicle ushered in its first day of holiday closure after a year of intense activity. In contrast to the scenes of factories shutting down and employees returning to their hometowns, another group of facilities is operating with lights on late into the night, intensifying production schedules. A surge in consumer demand, driven by the overlapping gift-giving season and New Year shopping festivals, has propelled Guangdong-made products into a pre-holiday order peak.
The foreign trade manager of Dongguan Wanle Tonghua Baby Products Co., Ltd., Zhong Xingyao, had just returned from a business trip to Germany. "Compared to previous years, this year's orders are more stable, with an increased proportion of repeat purchases from existing clients. Demand for our products is typically high during the gift season," Zhong noted. Looking through this pre-holiday production window, it's clear that company "stockpiling" extends beyond physical inventory in warehouses; it also involves strategic planning for new annual capacity, market expansion, and innovation reserves. Developing AI toys, increasing domestic market share, and pursuing more ambitious global layouts are all key focus areas for the year. While fulfilling current orders, companies are already building potential for the next growth cycle.
"January Orders Soar 272% Year-on-Year" Busy, intense, yet orderly—these are the keywords for these manufacturing enterprises. Guangdong Weili Electric Appliance, once hailed as the "Washing Machine King of China," is a prime example. For workers on its production lines, this year's Spring Festival holiday is notably brief. After a mere five-day stoppage, they will return to the生产线 on the fourth day of the lunar new year. Since January, all production lines have been running continuously, with washing machine orders being particularly robust. Similarly, Haixin Smart Kitchen Group's Suoer Home is experiencing a situation where both domestic and international orders are overflowing, leading to delays. Its production lines operate until 11 p.m. The company's Marketing General Manager, Yang Zhangang, revealed that order volume in January surged by 272% compared to the same period last year. The fourth quarter is traditionally the peak season for the smart kitchen appliance industry, with orders potentially accounting for nearly 35% of the annual total. "Production schedules for January through March are completely full. Among custom enterprises, our holiday break is likely the shortest," Yang said, adding that staff have been reassigned to assist on the front lines. The Suoer Home warehouse is stocked with products awaiting shipment.
This bustling activity also permeates food processing workshops filled with New Year spirit. At Dongguan Baikelin Supply Chain, production lines operate in tight sequence—from broth simmering and raw material processing to pre-cooling, quick-freezing, and packaging. Workers are handling orders for dishes like "Poon Choi" (a traditional layered dish) and "Buddha Jumps Over the Wall," which will become delicacies on Guangdong families' New Year's Eve dinner tables. New Year dishes are an important载体 of Spring Festival culture. Poon Choi, which combines premium ingredients and can be flexibly adapted to family tastes, symbolizes "fullness and wealth" and serves both as a festive meal and a gift, making it a highly popular category in the market. Sales负责人 Chen Shan has noticed a clear increase in orders. "Recent sales have grown about 10% year-on-year. Worker shifts are scheduled until 3 or 4 a.m., and we've recently hired over ten new workers," Chen stated. To ensure food supply during the Spring Festival period, they have increased manpower investment.
Faced with surging and diverse orders, intelligent upgrades have become a key support for enterprises to ensure delivery and quality. For instance, in the non-standard custom home sector, where every order has different dimensions and structures, the error rate is high. Suoer Home has implemented intelligent upgrades to its backend production lines, enabling equipment to automatically interface with front-end design requirements. This automatic matching reduces errors caused by manual intervention, improves production efficiency, and lowers labor costs. Weili Electric has integrated AR technology into its automated production lines, using AI and robots to replace manual assembly, significantly boosting production efficiency. The cycle time on the refrigeration workshop's assembly line has been reduced from 17 seconds to 10 seconds, representing an efficiency increase of nearly 50%.
For Wanle Tonghua, the large-scale stockpiling before new product launches each year relies heavily on Dongguan's advantages as a global hub for toy manufacturing. Zhong Xingyao pointed out that Dongguan's完善的 supply chain significantly shortens the cycle from product sampling to mass production, allowing companies to respond quickly in both new product development and order fulfillment. "We have a total of seven factories nationwide, three of which are located in Dongguan. Small-batch testing and rapid iteration of new products are mainly completed at the headquarters. This efficient and flexible iteration capability is particularly important for responding to overseas market demands," Zhong explained. Workers in the sewing department are rushing to complete products.
"Reserves" Extend Beyond Products Research indicates that companies' current "stockpiling" is not limited to physical products in warehouses but also includes reserves of capacity, market presence, and innovation. The current production boom serves both to fulfill immediate orders and acts as a crucial step for companies to accumulate energy for the new year's development and plan for the long term.
Recognizing the demand for high-end pre-made New Year dishes in the Guangdong market, Baikelin Supply Chain established a factory in Dongguan. Leveraging local supply chain and labor advantages, while meeting current orders, the company plans to expand its market in the new year, targeting sales growth of 10% to 15%.
Wang Zhen, Chairman of Wanle Tonghua, who has deep experience in the toy industry, aims to build a "toy kingdom" with its own established brands. Facing the new trend of "AI + trendy toys" in the industry, the company plans to benchmark against leading brands by 2026, deepening the integration of AI features and product design. Currently, related new products are gradually entering mass production. At overseas exhibitions, the exquisite design of their products has sparked curiosity among foreign visitors, with questions like, "Is this an AI toy? Can I chat with it?" This feedback gives Wanle Tonghua confidence in the AI toy新品 slated for release in the new year. Zhong Xingyao explained that years of business积累 have given the company a deep understanding of usage scenarios for children in different markets, enabling targeted product adjustments to better align functions and details with real family needs, rather than simply following trends. "For example, since the U.S. market favors elements like hamburgers, fries, and avocados, and prefers high-saturation colors, we incorporate these elements into our toys," Zhong said. Although not the earliest entrant in this space, the company still sees room for differentiated development. "We focus on organically integrating AI functionality with product form. Even when benchmarking against industry giants, we have our own advantages in design flexibility and market response speed," Zhong added.
Other companies are demonstrating more ambitious global layouts. Weili Electric has set a goal of "doubling in three years and冲刺 100 billion by 2028." It commenced production at a factory in Thailand in early 2025, plans to establish a second factory in Egypt, and intends to set up a third base in the Americas in the future. Simultaneously, Weili, which historically focused more on overseas markets, is also building its brand domestically, supported by the 2026 "Guangdong Goods Touring the World" initiative.
Tracing Suoer Home's development path—from beginning exports to the U.S. in 2011, acquiring a local U.S. brand in 2015, offering comprehensive customized kitchen appliance solutions domestically starting in 2020, to rapidly establishing a factory in Thailand in 2025 amidst tariff uncertainties—it appears the company has consistently seized opportunities to add weight to future certainty. "When we returned to the domestic market, competition among kitchen appliance brands was already fierce, with everyone knowing brands like Fotile, Robam, and Casarte. Therefore, Suoer had to integrate its kitchen appliances into overall spatial solutions to find a viable path," Yang Zhangang pointed out. He stated that in the new year, the company will continue to focus on "complete whole-case design and output" and remains confident in achieving new growth.
The confidence of enterprises to plan for the future is also rooted in Guangdong's solid manufacturing ecosystem. Guangdong hosts all 31 major manufacturing categories found in China and has nurtured nine trillion-yuan industrial clusters. This complete industrial chain and the model of efficient, collaborative industrial clusters are key supports enabling companies to respond quickly to orders and flexibly allocate production capacity. In 2026, Guangdong will continue to organize activities like "Global Tour," "National Tour," and "Southern Guangdong Tour" for its products. The province plans to select 265 overseas exhibitions for the year, organizing participation for 25,000 Guangdong-based enterprises. It will also arrange 323 "Guangdong Trade Nationwide" exhibitions, supporting no fewer than 60,000 enterprises in expanding their markets. This series of measures is expected to create broader development space for Guangdong's companies.
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